1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a processing apparatus which performs processing of heating a surface of a medium to be processed via a film, and a cartridge detachably mountable to the processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, many printed matters have different degrees of surface gloss depending on coverage rates thereof because a recording material and colorant have different glossiness from each other. With respect to such a printed matter mentioned above, there are proposed many kinds of methods of forming a uniform glossy surface all over the surface of the printed matter through a variety of post-processing steps, such as an application of over-coating.
Moreover, in recent years, many kinds of technologies for controlling gloss are proposed. For example, in offset printing, the following method enables a variety of expressions of gloss. That is, after printing with colorant ink, a specific portion is offset using UV curable transparent ink. Then, the printed matter is exposed to UV all over its surface so that the UV curable transparent ink is fixed. According to this method, gloss of specific portions (photographs or titles, etc.) is enhanced so that a printed matter having excellent visual effects can be output.
For an electrophotographic system, there is proposed a method in which gloss of a printed matter is enhanced all over its surface so as to obtain a photo-like recording (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-086747). In this method, the surface of the printed matter, on which an image has been formed with toner, is re-heated via an endless belt having a high surface smoothness to re-use the toner. After that, the toner is cooled under a state in which the toner is brought into contact with the belt so that the toner is solidified under a state in which the smoothness of the belt is transferred to the surface of the image formed by the toner. This method makes it possible to control the gloss all over the surface of the printed matter, but it is difficult to control gloss of a part of the surface of the printed matter.
As a result of the diligent studies, the inventors of the present invention have found that a method of heating a part of a printed matter using a thermal head and a thin film is suitable for controlling gloss of a part of a surface of the printed matter on which an image has been formed by an electrophotographic system etc. According to this method, through electrical control of the thermal head, arbitrary positions on the printed matter can be heated. When a medium to be processed is a printed matter on which an image has been formed with toner by an electrophotographic system, gloss of the printed matter can be controlled at arbitrary positions thereof by heating via a film a toner image of the printed matter so as to fuse, then performing cooling and separation.
Here, because the quantity of heat to be produced by the thermal head is small, a thin film having small heat resistance is preferably used to heat a toner image. However, such a film can be deformed due to a heat contraction when being heated so that re-use of the film becomes difficult. Therefore, it is convenient to make this film disposable by enabling the film to be taken up by a take-up shaft of a take-up system.
However, when the film is made disposable as mentioned above, the film needs to be replaced by a service technician or a user. As far as the inventors of the present invention know, there is no method of containing a film or mounting a film on a main body of a surface processing apparatus, which is preferably adaptable to such a surface processing apparatus while enabling the film to be easily replaced.
It is important that mounting operations of a film are not complicated, and no dust adheres to a film or a thermal head particularly when users handle films by themselves.